Twice Shy

Have you ever rolled out an upgrade only to have people complain that they preferred the old version?

The Situation

I am in the process of replacing our last CRT holdouts with spanking new wide screen LCDs. Amazingly, some users are fretting about this. The problem is that they proofread on screen and have had bad experiences with pixelated LCDs in the past. While I wouldn’t begrudge their fears, I do feel a certain amount of exasperation. Like the troglodytes in Plato’s allegory of the cave, they are overly content with their dim, blurry views of virtual reality. Moreover, I don’t want to force them out of the cave into the sunshine. I just want to upgrade the fire to a lantern and smooth out the cave wall, so to speak.

Step 1

The first step was to select a monitor model. It was surprisingly hard to find reviews that focused on the monitor’s presentation of text. These persnickity users need to be able to spot an italic comma hidden in normal text. But the LCD market is all about gaming or watching movies. Contrast ratio! Woohoo! Color! Yeehaw! I finally settled on the 22″ Samsung SyncMaster 2220wm. Fresh out of the box, it was like a wall of light. You could use it to treat depression in stuffed donkeys. I probably spent 1/2 hour fiddling with the controls to get it just right, i.e., toned waaayyy down. Brightness down to well below 50. Then, a day later, after (ahem) reading the manual, I discovered a shortcut to “Text” mode. It automatically dims the monitor and changes the color temperature. Nice.

Step 2

The second step was the mention the monitor to the user. You would think the process would be like a commercial for a flat screen TV, where the customer drools unself-consciously in anticipation. Alas, this is slightly more difficult than getting our baby to eat a string bean. I had to mention the new monitor to her in passing and indicate that it was optional. I set it up and tuned it on my computer and asked her for some “sample documents” so that we could verify it would work okay. I waited a couple of days and told her that my examination of the documents didn’t turn up any problems with the monitor and invited her to view it.

Step 3 (not profit, yet)

The third step was to actually put the user in front of the monitor. Slyly, I didn’t let her sit down right away. Instead, I sat there talking and clicking, resizing windows, and even ignored her the first few times she asked if she could drive. Finally I said “Oh sure,” and got up. Upon sitting down she immediately grimaced “Oh, this isn’t good.”

Step 4

My hands clenched and I contained a sigh. “You know,” I said with feigned cheer, “it didn’t look good to me at first, but after a few minutes my eyes adjusted.”

A few minutes later, “No, it still doesn’t look right.”

So I changed the topic of conversation, she sat back, and a few minutes later she glanced at the screen.

“Hey, it looks good now. What happened?”

Turns out it was the distance. She was happiest about 2 feet from the monitor. Which makes sense becuase it’s a freakin’ 22″ monitor!

Step 5

Next user. Rinse and repeat. Ugh.

Just make a button – problem solved

I sat in on a meeting this week in which a librarian was talking to a publishing industry working group and getting a bit too granular about archiving digital books. There was a lot of silence, and then someone asked “Isn’t this the sort of thing that gets solved and we just press a button?” He wasn’t joking.

He’s on a digital working group and his attitude is that techies make buttons and his job is to press them.

A good reply would have been “What color would you like the button to be?” (to paraphrase a post I read recently)

Clicknesia

Clicknesia. n. Inability to remember where one has clicked.

Mouspasm. n. Uncontrollable spasm of the mouse hand that sends the cursor careening over large swaths of screen, usually accompanied by desperate clicks hoping to trigger something.

Example: Randomly click about the control panels of your XP machine. Land on Accessibility Options, then the Display  tab. Click the High Contrast checkbox. Notice or do not notice. It matters not. Wonder why nothing is happening. Click the handy Settings button right next to the checkbox. Stare at wondrous list of colors and possibilities. Scroll down until you find Windows Classic or Standard or something that looks familiar to you. Click OK OK etc. Sigh because nothing happened and forget you ever touched that control panel. After all, if you never truly intended to do something, could you have done it?
The next day notice that web pages look funny and call your IT person. Profess ignorance of causes. See how long it takes your IT person to figure out why all the background properties of the CSS on web pages in any browser on your machine appear to be disabled.

Estimation Iteration

In an episode of ST TNG, Scotty comes back as a guest star and ends up working with Geordi on, well, you know, transferring the warp drive hoo-ha to the shields, or some jibberish the writers pulled out of their butts. At one point Scotty is aghast to learn that Geordi always tells Picard exactly how long it will really take him to accomplish things. He insinuates that Geordi still has a lot to learn.

When I first saw the episode I thought the joke explained a lot about Scotty. The second time I saw this particular clip was while bartending for a crowd of engineers. They roared with laughter. I understood that perhaps there was a broader truth here.

Then one day I became a sysadmin and merrily told people how long it would take me to accomplish their various requests. Oops. After a few years I’ve gotten pretty good at giving what sounds like a reasonable estimate that in fact gives me tons of leeway.

On the flip side, users will gladly pretend they have a deadline and guiltlessly make you run in circles for no good reason. “If I could have that in ten minutes it would be fantastic,” runs the typical plea. You drop everything and produce whatever it is they need. They thank you. Two weeks later you find out they haven’t even used it yet. That’s when you know you’re on the receiving end of repairman culture.

Pretty soon, if you start thinking about it, you realize that all sorts of people have been giving you bogus estimates of just about everything in your life, not just how long it will take to get something done. Look at how “Heckuva job!” turned out. In fact, you realize you have been giving yourself bogus estimates. This haircut can work for a few more weeks. These running shoes match everything I own. I’m pretty good at making spaghetti. What’s that about?

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